Merging audio sources from amp and PC into one (headphones)?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Peavers
  • Start date Start date
P

Peavers

New member
Hello folks

Just a quick question I'm hoping someone can help with. I'm trying to do something very simple but not really sure what I need to buy.

All I want to be able to do is play a track from my PC and run the output of my amp into headphones. Not really interested in recording anything, and obviously want as little as delay as I can get - What is it I should be buying? I use to do this via an audio interface but the clipping was pretty bad and I wasn't able to get a huge amount of volume from my amp source.

I can't work out if I want an audio interface, a mixer, or something else?

-e- Should make this clear I'm not trying to use any software to merge tracks together, I simple want to be able to play along with a backing track and have both my instrument and backing track over the same set of headphones.
 
Last edited:
You should be able to do it with what you've got assuming you have enough line ins on your interface. Any clipping is probably user error rather than being an inherent problem with the process. So before you go buying anything else, perhaps retry with what you've got if you have the channels.

Failing that, a small mixer would be useful.
 
The interface I'm using would work if I ran it with something like Cubas and created a new track etc but I'd really like to avoid having to use heavy lifting software like that. It also no longer has driver support which makes it impossible to use on W7+ (M-Audio Mobile Pre).

Any mixer in the $300ish price range you could recommend?
 
Nice as the A&H is, if this is only to drive a headphone mix, I'd go for the cheapest, smallest Behringer I could find. Generally there's tons of suitable ones on fleabay for twenty or thirty dollars.

Unless you plan to use the mixer in the actual recording chain later on, no sense spending more.
 
Bobbsy said:
Nice as the A&H is, if this is only to drive a headphone mix, I'd go for the cheapest, smallest Behringer I could find. Generally there's tons of suitable ones on fleabay for twenty or thirty dollars.

Unless you plan to use the mixer in the actual recording chain later on, no sense spending more.
Click to expand...
^^^^ this ^^^^^

If ALL you're wanting to do is be able to jam along with tracks then a cheapo mixer'll do what you want.
 
Thanks for all the replies folks, and yeah that's all I'm looking for - All the mixers I'm looking at seem to be way over the top for what I actually need. Guess I'm just looking in the wrong price bracket.

The small cheap ones won't induce any sort of delay or clipping will they?

Looking at the Mackie 402-VLZ3 at the moment
 
Clipping is a result of not understanding your gain staging and is a user created situation. You can clip a mixer just as easily as when recording, you just have to work out how not to. It's not hard. Reduce the trim/gain, increase the channel fader and/or master to compensate. Easy.

If you're just plugging everything into a mixer, then there shouldn't be any latency at all. I used to have a little 4 track Behringer which would have been perfect for this sort of stuff.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top